Inspiration and Disappointment
(or Why a Good Time Never Lasts)
EXCERPT FROM "LIVING
INSPIRED" - CHAPTER 2 (by Rabbi Tatz)
The natural pathway
of all life experiences begins with inspiration
and soon fades to disappointment. Let us analyze this phenomenon and
understand it.
Human consciousness and human senses are tuned to an
initial burst of
sensitivity and then rapidly decay into dullness. Sights, sounds, smells,
even tactile stimuli are felt sharply at first and then hardly at all - a
constant sound is not registered; one suddenly becomes aware that it was
present when it stops! We are incapable of maintaining the freshness of any
experience naturally - only in the dimension of miracle is that possible:
the sacrificial bread in the Beis Hamikdash, the Temple, remained steaming
fresh permanently to manifest the constant freshness of Hashem's (G-d's)
relationship with the Jewish people. The natural pathway is that things
which are fresh become stale.
One of the Torah sources for this idea lies in the
sequence of events
surrounding the exodus from Egypt. At an extremely low point in our
history, during the intense misery of slavery in Egypt, literally at the
point of spiritual annihilation, the Jewish people were uplifted
miraculously. Ten plagues revealed Hashem's presence and might, culminating
in a night of unprecedented revelation with the tenth. This spiritual high
was amplified by many orders of magnitude at the splitting of the sea -
there the lowliest of the Jewish people experienced more than the highest
prophet subsequently. And suddenly, once through the sea, they were
deposited in a desert with many days of work ahead of them to climb to the
spiritual status of meriting the Sinai experience, the giving of the Torah.
Mystically, a desert means a place of intense death-forces, a place of
lethal ordeals. No water means no life. (And we see later the potency of
the ordeals which faced them in the desert.)
What is the meaning of this pattern? The idea is that
in order to
save the Jewish people in Egypt outside help was necessary. Hashem
appeared and elevated us spiritually although we did not deserve it
intrinsically, we had not yet earned it. But once saved, once inspired,
once made conscious of our higher reality, the price must be paid, the
experience must be earned, and in working to earn the level which was
previously given artificially, one acquires that level genuinely. Instead
of being shown a spiritual level, one becomes it.
And that is the secret of life. A person is inspired
artificially at
the beginning of any phase of life, but to acquire the depth of personality
which is demanded of us, Hashem removes the inspiration. The danger is
apathy and depression; the challenge is to fight back to the point of
inspiration, and in so doing to build it permanently into one's character.
The plagues in Egypt and the splitting of the sea are dazzling beyond
description, but then Hashem puts us in the desert and challenges us to
fight through to Sinai. In Egypt He demonstrates destruction of ten levels
of evil while we watch passively; in the desert He brings ten levels of
evil to bear against us and challenges us to destroy them.
This idea recurs everywhere. Pesach occurs in Nissan -
the zodiac of
this month is the sheep, an animal which is passively led. Next comes Iyar
- the ox, an animal which has its own willful strength. And thereafter comes
Sivan - twins, perfect harmony. It is like a father teaching his child to
walk: first the father supports the child as he takes his first step, but
then the father must let go; there is no other way to learn, and the child
must take a frightened and lonely step unaided. Only then, when he can walk
independently, can he feel his father's love in the very moment which
previously felt like desertion.
Unfortunately most people do not know this secret. We
are misled into
thinking that the world is supposed to be a constant thrill and we feel
only half-alive because it is not. Let us examine some applications of this
fundamental principle.
* * *
In aggadic writings we are told that the unborn child
is taught the
whole Torah in the womb. An angel teaches him all the mysteries of Creation
and all that he will ever need to know in order to reach perfection, his
own chelek (portion) in Torah. A lamp is lit above his head, and by its
light he sees from one end of the world to the other. As the child is born,
however, the angel strikes him on the mouth and he forgets all that he has
learned and is born a simple and unlearned baby. The obvious question is:
why teach a child so much and then cause all the teaching to be forgotten?
But the answer is that it is not forgotten; it is
driven deep into
the unconscious. A person may be born with no explicit knowledge, but
beneath the conscious surface, intact and rich beyond imagination, is all
that one wishes to know! A lifetime of hard work learning Torah and working
on one's personality will constantly release, bring to consciousness,
innate wisdom. Often when one hears something beautiful and true one has
the sensation, not of learning something, but of recognizing something! A
sensitive individual will feel intimations of his or her own deep intuitive
level often.
The pathway is clear - a person is born with a lifetime
of work
ahead, spiritual wisdom and growth are hard-earned. But the inspiration is
within; you were once there! And that inner sense of inspiration provides
the motivation, the source of optimism and confidence that genuine
achievement is possible, even assured, if the necessary effort is made.
* * *
A second application: a characteristic feature of childhood, and
relatively, of the teenage years, is inspired optimism and the lack of a
sense of limitation. Children believe that they can become anything. The
world is larger-than-life to a child, a child is not oppressed by a limited
sense of what is possible. A child has simply to be exposed to almost any
form of greatness (unfortunately, all too often physical and meaningless)
to begin fantasizing about becoming or achieving that same thing.
However, later in life one is lucky to have any inspiration left at
all. Many adults wonder why life seemed so rich when they were teenagers,
why they could laugh or cry so richly, so fully, back then; and why life
seems so flat (at best) now. But the idea is as we have described above.
First comes a phase of unreal positivity, a charge of energy. And then life
challenges one to climb back to real achievement independently.
* * *
A third application is to be found in the ba'al teshuva world (ba'al
teshuva describes a person who has discovered a Torah-oriented way of life
after living a more secular lifestyle). Many ba'alei teshuva experience an
unexpected and disturbing letdown. Often the pathway is as follows. A young
person discovers Torah, becomes inspired by a Torah teacher, and begins to
study. Every Torah experience, whether in learning or in contact with the
Orthodox world, is spectacular. Every text studied is alive with
significance, every Shabbos experience is high, and there is a phase of
euphoria. Somehow though, subtly, this changes and growth has to be sought.
Learning may be very difficult. Often the difficulties seem to far outweigh
the breakthroughs. Many are tempted not to persevere in learning. Of course
this is exactly the way it must be, real growth in learning comes when real
effort is generated. Just as physical muscle is built only against
strenuous resistance, so too spiritual and personality growth is built only
against equivalent resistance. A person who understands this secret can
begin to enjoy the phase of work; a maturity of understanding makes clear
that the first phase was artificial, it is the second phase which yields
real development.
* * *
Perhaps the sharpest application of this idea in modern
Western
society is in marriage. Marriage today is to a large extent in ruins in the
secular world. In many communities divorce is more usual than survival of
marriage, and even in those marriages which do survive it is common to find
much disharmony.
One of the prime factors in this disastrous situation
is the lack of
understanding of our subject. Marriage has two distinct phases: romance,
and love. Romance is the initial, heady, illogical swirl of emotion which
characterizes a new relationship and it can be extreme. Love, in Torah
terms, is the result of much genuine giving. Love is generated essentially
not by what one receives from a partner, but by the well-utilized
opportunity to give, and to give oneself. The phase of romance very soon
fades, in fact just as soon as it is grasped it begins to die. A
spiritually sensitive person knows that this must be so, but instead of
becoming depressed and concerned that one has married the wrong person, one
should realize that the phase of work, of giving, is just beginning. The
phase of building real love can now flourish. In fact, in Hebrew there is
no word for "romance" - in its depth it is an illusion. However, in the
world of secular values, the first flash, the "quick fix", is everything.
"Love" is translated as "romance" and when it dies, what is left? No-one
has taught young people that love and life are about giving and building,
and so the tendency is to give up and search for a "quick fix" elsewhere.
Of course, the search must fail because no new experience will last.
Understanding this well can make the difference between marital misery or
worse and a lifetime of married happiness. Jewish marriage is carefully
crafted to transition from initial inspiration, not to disappointment but
to even deeper inspiration. The menstrual separation laws are just one
example - instead of allowing intensity to dull into tired familiarity,
phases of separation generate new inspiration and the magic never fades.
* * *
In all these applications, and in fact in all of life,
the challenge
of the second phase is to remember the first, to remain inspired by that
memory and to use it as fuel for constant growth. The Rambam describes life
as a dark night on a stormy plain - lashed by the rain, lost in the
darkness, one is faced with despair. Suddenly, there is a flash of
lightning. In a millisecond the scenery is as clear as day, one's direction
obvious. But just as soon as it is perceived it disappears; and one must
fight on through the storm with only the memory of that flash for guidance.
The lightning lasts very briefly; the darkness may seem endless.
That is the pattern of life, short-lived inspiration and lengthy
battles. The tools needed are determination, perseverance and a stubborn
refusal to despair. Personal ordeals which make despair seem imminent are
in reality a father's hands, withdrawn so that you can learn to walk. And
the work of remembering the flash of light when it seems impossible is
emuna, faith.
The third phase, and happy is the one who attains it
while yet alive,
is transcendence. It is a regaining of the level of the first phase, but
now deserved, earned, and therefore far beyond it.
There is a statement of the Sages which describes the final
transcendence, the transition from this world to the next, and it describes
the angels which come to greet a person at that time. One of these angels
comes to search out "Where is this person's Torah, and is it complete in
his hand." The Gaon of Vilna points out, chillingly, that the higher being
which asks this question is not a stranger. Suddenly one recognizes the
very same angel with whom he learned Torah in the womb! And the question to
be answered is: Where is that Torah which inspired you then? Have you
brought it into the world and made it real? And can it now be called yours?
EXCERPT FROM "LIVING
INSPIRED" - CHAPTER 2 (by Rabbi Tatz)
RELATED:
Jewish Philosophy
Endnotes
(1) There are mystical sources which state
that the plagues in Egypt were
ten in number in order to destroy the ten dimensions of evil with which the
Egyptians had "contaminated" the ten sayings of Creation (and hence
occurred in reverse order: the Creation developed from an infinite point in
concentric layers, as it were, and the plagues reversed this order to peel
away the layers of impurity from the outside to arrive eventually at a pure
center - the first saying of Creation was "In the beginning"; the last
plague was destruction of the firstborn, the manifestation of "firstness",
of new creation; the second saying was "Let there be light"; the second-
last plague was darkness! And these sources proceed to work out the entire
sequence thus). However, in the desert the Jewish people faced ten trials,
each representing a battle with one of the ten dimensions of evil on a
cosmic scale, their challenge being to defeat all evil on their journey to
holiness and thereby return the world to its perfection; had they succeeded
they would have arrived at the borders of Israel able to usher in the final
and permanent redemption with their entry into the Land. The desert, in
other words, is the dimension of cosmically concentrated evil.
(2) This also gives an insight into how a person can generate a chiddush
(novel idea) in Torah. How can a human being originate Torah? Torah is a
gift from a higher dimension, surely. But the answer is clear: a human
being can bring original, genuine Torah into the world because it is
contained within him already, at a level deeper than the conscious. All
that is needed is to lower a bucket into the deep well of the neshama
(soul) and draw that wisdom!
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